ORS

The Yankees position in negotiations is very unique. They are the known and acknowleged big spender. They are the last stop for FA shopping his services. Agents get best and final from everyone before they call on the Yankees. Therefore, the Yankees get their guy for always what looks like "just a few million more" than what other teams offered. The likely reality is....they only had to offer a few dollars more for their best and final. This looks like "lunch eating", but the reality is that it's easy to look like you've outmaneuvered the opposition by "just enough" when you always have the benefit of final offer. I'm surprised someone as intelligent as you doesn't recognize this as part of the dynamic.

I love to hear the convoluted justification for this nonsense.

Do you guys (a700 and Jacko) really not see how this statement applies leverage in future negotiations with Boston? He's putting them on the hot seat when he sits down with them and Holliday. The same conditions will apply. They'll tell Boston what it will take to strike a deal with the Yankees looming in the background. He's reminding them how that scenario played out last time. No, I'm not suggesting he's lying about them proposing an amount that would have settled a deal. Like example, I do question the definition of reasonable in Boras land. As for the question about why didn't the FO "leak" information the audacity of the demand (if it was an unreasonable offer), I do recall the FO stating they believed negotiations were over when the demands were communicated. To me, that communicates just as much and leaves as much to interpretation as Boras' "reasonable". All this throwing around of numbers is self-serving IMO. Whatever the level was, this latest statement is a threat to the Boston FO that they need to jump to the level Boras and Holliday ask for if they want to land him. They are playing a game of chicken, one with little to no risk for them because the Yankee offer will top Boston's if they don't jump.

My analogy is applicable because I'm not changing the field, I'm changing what the players can do on the field. This is exactly what's happening with the Yankees advantage. They take the field with players that can do more.

So? When you play Chess at my house under my rules, all my pawns have the power of queens, and my queen has all the normal powers, plus it can move like a knight. If I beat you, is that a legimate victory? No, you didn't have a level playing field because of my rules. Now, it's not the fault of the Yankees that they were given an unfair advantage or that they took advantage of it, but the inequity exists, and whenever an inequity exists in competition that is supposedly based on fairness of opportunity, then you don't get a true outcome. You get a delegitimate result. I think history speaks volumes about how wrong this statement is. For decades, the Yankees have enjoyed the benefit of playing in the premier resource market for the entertainment industry. Prior to the amateur draft, they had the most farm system teams that horded the most elite young talent, and they won the most championships. Since the beginning of free agency, they have consistently either lead or been near the lead in total team salary, and they have won the most championships. Clearly, neither of these things correlate perfectly to winning championships, because if they did they would have won #27 long ago, but the evidence is clear that their advantages lead to more success on the field. They had to go out on the field and win the games? Well, duh. That doesn't change the umimpressiveness of the accomplishment when their advantages are taken into consideration, just like it wouldn't be impressive if I beat you in chess under my "house rules".

This is clearly the biggest stumbling block to the implementation of a cap. However, it's not impossible to overcome. They'd just have to implement a cap in phases, while using a stiff penalty for new contracts that keep a team in violation of the cap. All current contracts keep their value, new contracts that put a team in violation of the cap in year 1 are penalized at 1x their over cap value, 2x in the 2nd year, and so on, or something like that, with an allowance that resigning current players at their current salary is exempt from cap penalty. This would mean that today's generation of stars could maintain their current salaries for as long as their current team is willing to keep them at their current value.

If you can't see the benefit for the MLBPA, then you haven't put any thought into it. In system where the cap/floor level is established as a percentage of total revenues, it would insulate the players from situations like what happened this past offseason. Only one team went gang-busters with salary. The rest of the league was very cautious given the economic situation. You would see a more balanced distribution of contracts instead of the insane money the 3 guys who went to NY got relative to their peers. Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting Adam Dunn or Bobby Abreu would get as much as someone like Mark Teixeira, but it wouldn't be 4x ratio either. There are more non-elite players than there are elites, and they could be seeing a larger piece of the FA money pie with mandated minimum spending levels.

They are absolutely delegitimized. The number of baseball players talented enough to be successful at the major league level is a fixed resource market. The current system allows teams with more financial resources to pick and choose from that resource market, with one team having substantial advantage to the point of having first choice at all times. No, it's not impossible for other teams to find success, but they have to do so through the burden of having to rely on unproven players. Not all of these players find ultimate success, which is why no small market teams are "in it" every year. Being "in it" almost every year for large market teams is the manifestation of the inequities of the system.

Someone mentioned the difficulty of getting MLBPA approval of a salary cap. I don't think it would be all that difficult. There's data to set the cap and floor that the union would have a hard time fighting against. Take the gross revenues and gross salaries over a 10 year period, find the average % of gross revenues that went to player salary, and set up the cap/floor around that number. It would show the players they aren't losing anything relative to the current system in the deal, and the number floats with revenues.

It is not designed to make other teams competitive, that is what revenue sharing is for. The LT money goes to an initiative to develop baseball in countries where it is in its infancy. In fact, the Yankees will likely benefit more than other teams from this initiative because they flex their financial muscle in the IFA market as well. The LT is a joke, IMO, and the Yankees regularly regard it as such.

Attendence is peanuts compared to broadcast revenues, and broadcast revenues are set years in advance, not based on current W/L success.

Your point about their spending being justified by their earning is fair if, and only if, the media markets the teams, all teams, have to operate in is equal. The fact is, these aren't equal. It's unfair to give the Yankees credit for making more money than any other franchise when they are the only original team left in the nation's largest media market. It's only worthy of notice when they aren't #1, which has never been the case.

He did, but also showed better than I thought he would. I was surprised he was able to stay afloat on the ground against Fedor. Fedor was working him, going for a kimura, an arm triangle, and an armbar, but Brett fought the submissions off. If you had told me the first round would have had that much ground time, I would have told you there wouldn't be a second. Rogers handled himself well on the big stage. Of course, he showed he's got a lot to learn in terms of humility in his after fight interview. No credit to Fedor and had the gall to suggest a rematch. That wasn't a fluke punch. Fedor had him timed after the first few exchanges, and he launched that attack at the moment Rogers was weak and unprepared as he billboarded his incoming left hook.

Just in case there's any confusion here, Gom, this is a rhetorical question. Regardless of what you say, we all know the real answer.

You got knocked the f*** out!!!

Nope, thought he had it.

Over....

Longest. Commercial break. In history.

I agree, save one moment, he controlled the fight. That said, the intent behind the creation of MMA fighting was to recreate real world fighting (within reason so that everyone walked away healthy, or at least able to fight another day), and the only thing that changed the true outcome of that fight, the real world outcome, was the clock.